The causes of the security breach leading to the destruction of the network were widely disputed in the ensuing investigation by U.S. intelligence.
Mole/Turncoat Some investigators suspected that a traitor in the CIA had leaked the identities of informants. In January 2018, a former CIA officer named
Jerry Chun Shing Lee was arrested and would eventually plead guilty on suspicion of helping dismantle the network.
Communications hack Foreign Policy reported that the CIA had botched the communications system, which was brought over from its operations in the
Middle East, that was used to contact its informants in China. In September 2022
Reuters provided screenshots of nine specific websites used as part of the communication system, which consisted of "more than 350 websites" in total. The websites were written in various languages, suggesting that they were used to communicate with CIA operatives from at least 20 countries including not only Iran and China but also Brazil, Russia, Thailand and Ghana. ==Aftermath==